Topics

1

Open Source and Libre Systems / Jeremy Bicha & Debian-Edu, Registered Sex offender

« on: May 02, 2026, 01:00:11 am »

I've put together a full history of the Jeremy Bicha situation, up to the point where he started working on the Debian-Edu package

Debianism spread many false rumours about abuse over the years.  In this case, somebody really is a registered sex offender and the debian-private messages suggest people knew about it but maybe they didn't tell everybody else.  They made inside jokes about it but I am one of the people who wasn't told when they brought him in to Debianism.

2

Open Source and Libre Systems / ActBlue: disappearance of IT director, Decklin Foster & Debian

« on: April 17, 2026, 08:31:38 am »

ActBlue is the fundraising platform for the US Democrats and some affiliated groups.

There is quite some controversy about their ability to protect the system from foreign interference.  It is well covered in the press and some official reports from committees so I'm not going to elaborate on whether those accusations are valid or not.

Nonetheless, their former IT director is a Debian Developer.  They also worked in Harvard helping with research into depression.  They disappeared.

I pulled out various messages and links to relevant material and published them all in a single page for those who want to do fact checking.

Some of their old blog posts may be worth a deep-dive.  The names of people they were connected to.

3

Open Source and Libre Systems / Debianism: voting to prioritize diversity over freedom and security

« on: March 23, 2026, 01:07:07 pm »

Debian elections are under way.

The nominations were due on Friday the 13th and only one person nominated.  People still have to vote, it is a choice between accepting and rejecting the candidate.

The candidate is the wife of a male developer but she does not declare the conflict of interest.

In parallel, there is a public CIVS poll where anybody can now cast a vote.  The community poll also includes Dr Norbert Preining

Having nominated on Friday the 13th, the votes finish on 17 April, the anniversary of a notorious Debian death that took place on our wedding day.  This was the source of a lot of the conflict in the community over 15 years now.

Sruthi Chandran has said she wants to focus on diversity and there is a big risk that more developers will be humiliated or blackmailed.

Sruthi Chandran is one of the DebConf organising committee but they never provided any public report when Abraham Raji died at DebConf.  When two workers at Amnesty International died they had external consultants prepare independent reports about the workplace.

Please use the debian-vote (subscribe) mailing list to ask questions of the candidate(s).

4

General OpenPOWER Discussion / Queensland Health, IBM's 12 year ban and the future of POWER

« on: March 02, 2026, 05:45:40 pm »

I put up a fresh blog about Queensland Health's IBM fiasco.  The whole company, including POWER components, was subject to a ban for 12 years in the state of Queensland public sector.

It is worth reading the official report and thinking about how it translates to behaviour in the Linux ecosystem.

Has anybody got any feeling about the future of the POWER platform?

Are any other vendors likely to come forward with a 100% open CPU like the POWER9?

5

Open Source and Libre Systems / Open source aspirations of credibility exploited to legitimize Bitcoin

« on: February 25, 2026, 06:46:51 am »

Free / Open source is not absolutely perfect or secure but many people feel it gives a better hope of security and independence than proprietary software.

Over many years, proponents of Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency have tried to align themselves with open source developers and well known projects or organisations.

Many people have remained neutral about this topic up to now.  Recent news reports talk about a "death spiral" or "crypto winter" after the BTC price crash.

Does anybody feel projects should do more to distance themselves from Bitcoin?

Could Linux distributions be legally liable for including Bitcoin packages in their distribution?

When Bitcoin  does implode, whether it is next week or in 10 years, could it impact the reputation of other open source initiatives and people promoting geeky innovation?

What would be the criteria for an open source project, such as a Linux distribution, to include or exclude a particular Cryptocurrency?

I started putting some of my observations in blog posts, this one begins to cover the relationship with open source phenomena

6

Open Source and Libre Systems / Censorship pressure on Raptor, messages missing

« on: February 22, 2026, 01:04:43 pm »

I received the following by private message.  I agree with the decision to have a separate area in the forum for open source politics.

I mildly agree with the decision to move the topic about the Debian lawsuit from the operating systems section to the water cooler section.

Each time I start a topic, I notice that Tim Kelly posts messages attacking my credibility as a developer and most of his messages make no reference to the topic itself.

Nonetheless, if people are lobbying Raptor to censor things, I feel their messages should all be published.

In the process of moving the topic, I notice the last message that I posted in the topic was lost and I kindly request that it be reinstated.

7

Open Source and Libre Systems / Swiss finance regulator FINMA deputy CEO resigns, collateral damage from Debian?

« on: February 04, 2026, 01:57:33 pm »

When the Debianists first attacked the Software Freedom Institute in November 2021, I asked the legal insurance provider to assist me.  They failed to do their job.  I only publish this here because other people have raised questions about judgments.  In fact, there was no valid judgment.  In the absence of legal insurance, I simply canceled the trademark and neutralized the dispute.

If there are legal fees to be paid or reimbursed, the money should have been paid by the insurance company.

Moreover, I was able to prove the financial regulator knew about deficiencies in the illegal legal insurance scheme for a very long time.

I published the most compelling evidence between January 2025 and March 2025 on the site JuristGate.com.  Not only did the regulator fail to protect the public but it looks like they even took an active role in the cover up too.

The head of insurance supervision, who was also deputy head of FINMA, resigned after I put the emphasis on the cover-up.  They did not provide a reason for the resignation.  So I simply published the sequence of events and I let people draw their own conclusions about whether she resigned due to the way I reverse engineered a cover-up.

MIT DEDP MicroMasters online learner's blog post about cover-up linked to resignation of Swiss financial regulator

8

Open Source and Libre Systems / $15B federal lawsuit vs. Google astroturfing in open source communities

« on: February 03, 2026, 10:00:38 am »

GiveSendGo, which is known for resisting censorship and supporting controversial legal disputes, hosts a new crowdfunding campaign about social engineering and black money in open source communities, in other words, astroturfing.

Here is the link to share.  Some platforms are censoring it already.  It will only succeed if people use email, DM and other means to share the link.  The greylisting of this particular topic reveals a lot about social control media and the pestering campaigns.

https://www.givesendgo.com/censorship-privacy

The law suit has been filed in the same court hosting Nicolas Maduro. 70,000 internal emails from debian-private and diversity programs have been offered when crowdfunding milestones are reached, even if the case fails. Open source leaders will be subject to depositions about payments they received from the controlling corporations before denouncing various people over the years. Only if the community contributes enough money to fund the lawyers, they are not volunteers.

Click to see the video and campaign details

9

Open Source and Libre Systems / Phil Wyett & Debian harassment

« on: August 19, 2025, 08:30:06 am »

On Sunday, Phil Wyett revealed he is another victim of cyberbullying in the Debian environment.  They were benefiting from his work every day but he didn't feel valued and he has quit.

A lot of people reached out to me after seeing news about Phil.  I don't have time to answer people personally but I did create a summary of the Phil Wyett & Debian controversy on my blog.

Have a look at the screenshot at the bottom, the huge number of packages he co-maintained.  He was very active on the debian-mentors list helping other newcomers.

I'm also updating the full history of Debian, based on debian-private.  New things are added into the timeline at least once per month.

For every one person who suffers like this, there are probably another 20 people who quit very quietly or don't join at all.

The impact of this decline is more acute for projects like POWER porting (and any other non-x86 architecture) because we don't have a lot of people here in the first place.

This is not about Phil and it was never about me either.

10

General OpenPOWER Discussion / police rumors, Talos II sold

« on: February 10, 2025, 05:20:32 pm »

Around FOSDEM, various people asked me about the "police" smear campaign.  It is extremely offensive to my family.  I actually resigned from some of my voluntary responsibilities around the time my father died.  It has nothing to do with police.

Jonathan Carter does not want every Debian author to have an equal chance in the elections.  FSFE even canceled their Fellowship elections.  Nonetheless, these people have no right to make defamation around the death of my father.

I put photographs on my blog.  People can look at the evidence in the photographs.

a) police arrested two Outreachy interns in Zurich, Switzerland and now the same two Albanian women were in close proximity to the crisis about Sonny Piers at GNOME

b) Switzerland is planning to ban Swastikas.  I photographed a Swiss woman with a Swastika tattoo but I have no connection to this woman or Nazism.  It is an odd coincidence, but my birthday is the Kristallnacht.

I used to row with a police officer.  He is one of the legends of policing in Australia and he won emergency practitioner of the year, a real life version of John McClane from Die Hard.  I have a lot of respect for the people who serve in the police and the military so I do not publish their names or other identifying details, nonetheless, it is a true story.

I sold both of my Talos II workstations but I was also very pleased with the reliability and features of the platform.  I am still interested in finding positive ways to ensure my open source development work is compatible with the POWER architecture and easily accessible to those people who choose any of the non-x86 architectures such as POWER and ARM64.

11

General OpenPOWER Discussion / Irish elections, CPU manufacturing, multinationals and the IPFS in elections

« on: November 28, 2024, 09:03:46 am »

Irish elections are tomorrow and one of the big issue is the state dependency on tax revenue from multinationals

There are many discussions that can be started about multinationals but the one topic I want to mention here is the presence of Intel's CPU manufacturing plant on the edge of Dublin and the supply chain that supports them.

People are asking how Ireland can broaden its revenue streams by having a more diverse range of companies.  Nonetheless, it makes sense to have companies that use the existing supply chains and skills.  This gives more options for tech workers when they want to change jobs.

Has anybody heard anything recently about anybody other than IBM wanting to engage in OpenPOWER chip production?

Does anybody have any general comments on the possibility of somebody producing RISC V in Ireland or is RISC V still a pipe dream?

At the same time, there is a a new category on my blog for IPFS and some posts about how this tool has been used and useful in elections.

12

General OpenPOWER Discussion / the Swiss harassment judgment, how it actually started

« on: October 21, 2024, 03:50:51 am »

After I made the post about selling my Talos II workstations, I received more queries about how the rumors about a harassment judgment really started back in 2018.

Therefore, I have now published the judgment and recordings from the trial in Zurich

One thing that is clear, the harassment was sometimes occurring when I was not even there.  I would sometimes be away for 1 or 2 weeks with my work. Carla would be alone with the cats and this racist Swiss landlady would make them feel really bad with her paw behavior.  My absences at the time are actually confirmed by the lawyers from the other side, they thought they had to harass Carla because I was not there and difficult to contact.  It is really incredulous that Debian people intruded and starting spreading rumors about harassment after this happened.

13

General OpenPOWER Discussion / for sale: two workstations, Talos II dual CPU / Radeon RX580 8GB

« on: October 04, 2024, 08:49:29 am »

Hi all,

My Talos II systems have worked very well for a number of years

I recently had some experiences with BIOS updates on hardware from another vendor.  The vendor requires people to have accounts, support contracts and running a specific operating system to run some utilities.  As the hardware had a very old BIOS firmware it couldn't update directly to the current version.  It was a huge hassle and it reminded me of the benefits of having things like petitboot and open source BIOS code.

Nonetheless, it feels foolish for me to spend time testing the platform and creating patches when some people are undermining collaboration in larger Linux distributions.

With that in mind I'm looking to sell the two workstations.  I will probably spend more of my time on other areas of open source.  By purchasing the workstations, you are indirectly supporting my work in other areas.

I can sell them whole or to reduce shipping costs I could remove them from the cases and sell the combination of motherboard/CPU/heatsink/memory without case/GPU.

Full specifications and proposed prices below.  Offers will be considered.

Regards,

Daniel



Workstation B, build price approx EUR 5,400, sell for EUR 3,500, buy only Talos II motherboard/two CPUs/HSF/RAM only EUR 2,900 :

Motherboard/Dual CPU/HSF bundle	Raptor	T2P9D01	1
Heat sink fan (HSF) – 3U	IBM	01KL960	2
CPU in bundle – 4-core POWER9 3.8GHz	IBM	CP9M01	2	dual CPU
SATA controller			1
CD/DVD ROM drive			1
RAM ECC 16GB DDR4-2666			8	(total: 128GB, spread over all eight channels for maximum performance)
Case	Corsair	Carbide Series Air 540 Cube	1
PSU	Seasonic	Prime TX 850	1
Fans	Noctua	NF-A14 chromax black swap	3
GPU	AMD / Saphhire	Radeon RX580 8GB	1

(SOLD) Workstation A, build price over EUR 6500, sell for EUR 4,500, buy only Talos II motherboard/two CPUs/HSF/RAM only EUR 3,800 (SOLD):

Motherboard/Dual CPU/HSF bundle	Raptor	T2P9D01	1
Heat sink fan (HSF) – 3U	IBM	01KL960	2
CPU - 8-core POWER9 3.8Ghz	IBM	CP9M32	2	dual CPU
RAM ECC 16GB DDR4-2666	Samsung	M393A2K40CB2-CTD	8	(total: 128GB, spread over all eight channels for maximum performance)
Case	Fractal	Define 7 XL	1
PSU	Seasonic	Prime TX 850	1
GPU	AMD / Saphhire	Radeon RX580 8GB	1
GPU riser	Fractal		1

14

General Discussion / HP printers and the hplip plugin

« on: July 04, 2024, 04:32:20 am »

Some HP printers need a binary plugin

The hplip (open source package) tool can download the plugin directly from HP

The plugin is an x86 binary

At some point HP added support for ARM

In some cases, the printer and flatbed scanner will work fine without the plugin but to use more advanced features, e.g. the ADF duplex mode, you need to have the plugin.

Does anybody have any experience with this issue, for example:

- is there any printer/scanner/ADF setup that gives a completely or as much as possible free experience?

- can the plugin be executed with an emulator?

- did anybody already raise a support request with HP for a ppc64el binary of the plugin?

15

Operating Systems and Porting / Debian security standards, deflecting questions about SSH2 issue

« on: July 03, 2024, 11:38:27 am »

The Talos II and Blackbird have been marketed as a platform for security-minded users and many people have purchased the platform with that in mind.

Security is only as good as the weakest link in the chain.  It is no good having the most secure hardware if there are regular defects in the OS or web browser or some other level in the stack.

I've recently started blogging about Debian's handling of security issues.

This is not a new concern: in 2008, it was the OpenSSL random number generator and some people still have vulnerable keys in use today, 16 years later.

The new revelation is that in March 2000, Edward Brocklesby took over the SSH2 package and uploaded new binaries into Debian

Six weeks later and in April 2000 Brocklesby was secretly expelled for hacking

The Debian Social Contract, point 3 tells us "we won't hide problems".  I felt the social contract compelled me to bring this SSH2 affair into the public domain at the beginning of June 2024.  Andreas Tille has made four more "Statement on Daniel Pocock" insult responses in barely four weeks, two of them on web sites and two by spam emails.  Somebody commented that Debian never had such a big hissy fit.

Nonetheless, these hissy fits reveal a lot about the culture.  I made a chronological review of the culture so people can see it is not about me, the series of suicides and other deaths, with evidence, suggest it is about the mindset of the group.  For people who have to answer everything with a new "Statement on Daniel Pocock", what we see is that being stubborn is more important than being secure.

The Brocklesby affair may be 24 years ago but it actually reveals a continuity.  We can measure subsequent security incidents against the Brocklesby affair and see that each time Debian is tested, the responses are lackluster.